It's not like they couldn't produce mindless drivel like Friends with actors who will work for much much less. If the production costs are too high, then they need to lower them and arrive at a better, smarter business model. If you're making a show that needs 24 million customers to sustain, stop, and make something else. If your actors are asking for a million per episode, hire some that don't. I'm sure there are plenty of actors just waiting for a chance to get in front of an audience.
It's true that absolute openness is, at least right now, impossible. But there have been many games that have given the players much more freedom, like the original Fallouts. Meanwhile Oblivion and Fallout 3 are open only in the sense that you can go where you like and complete quests in random order. Even if you do get a choice from time to time, it has no real consequences.
Well, basically, because Microsoft says so.
If Windows were a Linux distro, that approach might be viable. However, it isn't, and it has a proprietary license. A license that is no longer available for purchase. Any corporation that decides to keep using XP will have to face either never buying a new machine again, or supporting 2 or more operating systems. Sounds like a maintenance nightmare to me.
Actually, I'm just waiting for a render job to complete. I post because I need to waste away two more hours and because I enjoy disagreeing with strangers on the internet, much like others enjoy FreeCell. I replied to your particular posting because I feel strongly that jumping to conclusions is deeply wrong. If you feel your time is being wasted, my apologies. I'd like to point out though that you're free not to reply.
What are you, a negativity radar coupled with a beowulf cluster of Delphic oracles? There's clearly not enough data in his postings to positively determine his state of mind, his level of satisfaction from his work or anything else about him to override what he is clearly stating, much less give any useful advice.
Much like cleaning, you can't deal with negative things unless you're willing to immerse yourself in them to some degree. Finding another job would just be choosing to look the other way. You can be happy and cynical at once you know. And being cynical in itself is not really something negative, it's just another point of view. A very practical one, might I add.
How did the surgery work out? I'm precluded from surgery right now due to iris inflammation a while back. But I was considering it before. The doctor said it may become possible again in a couple of years. I never went through with it though because I was concerned about long-term side-effects.
I'm -1.5 and it's impossible for me to work without glasses. You must be sitting way too close to the screen. Either that or you're using a large screen and low resolution. I only take off my glasses when working on something very small, or reading (something that fits in my hands).
In Europe you don't buy warranties as an option. For electronics one year is the legal requirement, but many things have 2 or 3 year warranties. At best you can not buy an extension. IANAL.
There are obvious limitations to this (only in Linux, only with Compiz, only with hardware acceleration) and it seems like a roundabout way to do this, but I guess it's crazy enough to work. The UI interaction would probably be better though if it was integrated with the Gimp. Not that I'm complaining, it's certainly a neat idea. One of these days though, once GEGL is more integrated, I think I'll just sit down and try to do it myself. It's the open source way, after all.
Yes, rotating at multiples of right angles is much faster and is indeed non-destructive. It's missing the point however. Due to human anatomy and the configuration of joints in your arm, some lines and curves can only be quickly and easily drawn at an exact angle. For that, you need to be able to dynamically rotate the view of the image, not the image itself. It's true that it's not exactly a dealbreaker when the feature is absent, but if it's there, it makes painting incredibly pleasant and fun.
Anyway, feature I (and I suspect many others) want is in the bug tracker here if you're interested. Sadly, no developers seem too keen on implementing this (that I know of).
I'll admit it has been several months since I last checked out the Gimp. So, just to see what you're talking about, I downloaded and installed the latest stable release (2.6.7). So about that brush engine - it's a bit better now and finally responds well to tablet pressure. The curves are still a bit broken, but the changelogs for 2.7 indicate that will be fixed in the next release, so it's all good. But I still can't use larger brush sizes, basically anything above 100 pixels, comfortably. Which is not that big a deal, but they certainly help with shading. By canvas rotation you meant using the rotate tool, right? If that's the case, canvas rotation is still destructive, slow, and rather unwieldy to use. If you're not sure why that's a problem, try drawing a line and rotating it some 50 times. See how jagged and blurry it gets? Artists rotate the page so many times to make it easier to draw curves at particular angles, which means they sometimes need to rotate every other stroke. Sure, you can train yourself not to do that, but it's rather difficult. You could also offset the quality loss with each rotation by working at a much higher resolution than your target, but rotation is already slow enough at A4/300dpi, which is kind of low. Unless, of course, I'm blind and just can't seem to find proper canvas rotation. All in all, the brush engine has undergone enough improvement to make me at least seriously consider Gimp now.
Speaking as an amateur artist, there are two features that are absolutely essential, and that the Gimp fails to provide. First, a good parametric brush engine that produces nice, clean, smooth strokes, at any resolution. Can't paint without that. Second - non-destructive page rotation. Painter has been offering this for years. openCanvas too. Photoshop recently got the ability as well (the best implementation I've seen so far). Also nice would be stroke smoothing. If you're going to argue that those features just happen to be in those missing 10%, then that just means the Gimp is missing the most important (from an artist's standpoint) 10%. And then there will be people who will argue that I'm doing it wrong and that the Gimp is an image manipulation, as opposed to an image creation program. Well, can't argue there. But think of the possibilities if they added just a few odds and ends and turned the Gimp into an awesome free tool for artists! And these particular features wouldn't hurt the image manipulation crowd one bit.
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It's not like they couldn't produce mindless drivel like Friends with actors who will work for much much less. If the production costs are too high, then they need to lower them and arrive at a better, smarter business model. If you're making a show that needs 24 million customers to sustain, stop, and make something else. If your actors are asking for a million per episode, hire some that don't. I'm sure there are plenty of actors just waiting for a chance to get in front of an audience.
Is that you, Michael?
It's true that absolute openness is, at least right now, impossible. But there have been many games that have given the players much more freedom, like the original Fallouts. Meanwhile Oblivion and Fallout 3 are open only in the sense that you can go where you like and complete quests in random order. Even if you do get a choice from time to time, it has no real consequences.
Well, basically, because Microsoft says so. If Windows were a Linux distro, that approach might be viable. However, it isn't, and it has a proprietary license. A license that is no longer available for purchase. Any corporation that decides to keep using XP will have to face either never buying a new machine again, or supporting 2 or more operating systems. Sounds like a maintenance nightmare to me.
Actually, I'm just waiting for a render job to complete. I post because I need to waste away two more hours and because I enjoy disagreeing with strangers on the internet, much like others enjoy FreeCell. I replied to your particular posting because I feel strongly that jumping to conclusions is deeply wrong. If you feel your time is being wasted, my apologies. I'd like to point out though that you're free not to reply.
What are you, a negativity radar coupled with a beowulf cluster of Delphic oracles? There's clearly not enough data in his postings to positively determine his state of mind, his level of satisfaction from his work or anything else about him to override what he is clearly stating, much less give any useful advice.
Much like cleaning, you can't deal with negative things unless you're willing to immerse yourself in them to some degree. Finding another job would just be choosing to look the other way. You can be happy and cynical at once you know. And being cynical in itself is not really something negative, it's just another point of view. A very practical one, might I add.
How did the surgery work out? I'm precluded from surgery right now due to iris inflammation a while back. But I was considering it before. The doctor said it may become possible again in a couple of years. I never went through with it though because I was concerned about long-term side-effects.
Nope, no astigmatism here either. I work at 96 dpi viewed from about 1.5m (5 feet if you prefer) away. How close to your screen are you?
I'm -1.5 and it's impossible for me to work without glasses. You must be sitting way too close to the screen. Either that or you're using a large screen and low resolution. I only take off my glasses when working on something very small, or reading (something that fits in my hands).
Embarrassing? Why? The US has many regional laws too.
In Europe you don't buy warranties as an option. For electronics one year is the legal requirement, but many things have 2 or 3 year warranties. At best you can not buy an extension. IANAL.
Well if you're worried about security that much, I recommend duct tape over the lens.
They only started going downhill when Burton left them. The first one was at least good, and the second one was great.
I thought we have invented random number generators already?
You may not have noticed, but no such oracle exists, has ever existed, or is very likely to exist in the future. Therefore, your point is moot.
A theory is as good as its predictive power. If it predicts reality better than the previous one, who cares if it's "true", whatever that may mean.
You're right. I haven't seen anything that good from Hollywood in years.
There are obvious limitations to this (only in Linux, only with Compiz, only with hardware acceleration) and it seems like a roundabout way to do this, but I guess it's crazy enough to work. The UI interaction would probably be better though if it was integrated with the Gimp. Not that I'm complaining, it's certainly a neat idea. One of these days though, once GEGL is more integrated, I think I'll just sit down and try to do it myself. It's the open source way, after all.
Yes, rotating at multiples of right angles is much faster and is indeed non-destructive. It's missing the point however. Due to human anatomy and the configuration of joints in your arm, some lines and curves can only be quickly and easily drawn at an exact angle. For that, you need to be able to dynamically rotate the view of the image, not the image itself. It's true that it's not exactly a dealbreaker when the feature is absent, but if it's there, it makes painting incredibly pleasant and fun.
Anyway, feature I (and I suspect many others) want is in the bug tracker here if you're interested. Sadly, no developers seem too keen on implementing this (that I know of).
And no Linux? For shame!
As usual, I forgot Slashdot ignores line breaks.... Forgive me, oh benevolent gods of Preview!
I just ate a cookie. The above line is fiction, yet it doesn't violate any laws that I know of. It is, at worst, simply untrue.
I'll admit it has been several months since I last checked out the Gimp. So, just to see what you're talking about, I downloaded and installed the latest stable release (2.6.7). So about that brush engine - it's a bit better now and finally responds well to tablet pressure. The curves are still a bit broken, but the changelogs for 2.7 indicate that will be fixed in the next release, so it's all good. But I still can't use larger brush sizes, basically anything above 100 pixels, comfortably. Which is not that big a deal, but they certainly help with shading. By canvas rotation you meant using the rotate tool, right? If that's the case, canvas rotation is still destructive, slow, and rather unwieldy to use. If you're not sure why that's a problem, try drawing a line and rotating it some 50 times. See how jagged and blurry it gets? Artists rotate the page so many times to make it easier to draw curves at particular angles, which means they sometimes need to rotate every other stroke. Sure, you can train yourself not to do that, but it's rather difficult. You could also offset the quality loss with each rotation by working at a much higher resolution than your target, but rotation is already slow enough at A4/300dpi, which is kind of low. Unless, of course, I'm blind and just can't seem to find proper canvas rotation. All in all, the brush engine has undergone enough improvement to make me at least seriously consider Gimp now.
Speaking as an amateur artist, there are two features that are absolutely essential, and that the Gimp fails to provide. First, a good parametric brush engine that produces nice, clean, smooth strokes, at any resolution. Can't paint without that. Second - non-destructive page rotation. Painter has been offering this for years. openCanvas too. Photoshop recently got the ability as well (the best implementation I've seen so far). Also nice would be stroke smoothing. If you're going to argue that those features just happen to be in those missing 10%, then that just means the Gimp is missing the most important (from an artist's standpoint) 10%. And then there will be people who will argue that I'm doing it wrong and that the Gimp is an image manipulation, as opposed to an image creation program. Well, can't argue there. But think of the possibilities if they added just a few odds and ends and turned the Gimp into an awesome free tool for artists! And these particular features wouldn't hurt the image manipulation crowd one bit.